Pages

25 September 2011

"Perseus," by Robert Hayden

Her sleeping head with its great gelid massof serpents torpidly astirburned into the mirroring shield--a scathing image direas hated truth the mind accepts at lastand festers on.I struck. The shield flashed bare.

Yet even as I lifted up the headand started from that placeof gazing silences and terrored stone,I thirsted to destroy.None could have passed me then--no garland-bearing girl, no priestor staring boy--and lived.